BELGRADE, Serbia

Serbia on Saturday sent a diplomatic protest note to the European Union after one of its publications described inventor and electricity pioneer Nikola Tesla as a Croat.

Serbia's Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic confirmed on TV Pink that the country has sent a protest note to Brussels after the EU’s Learning Corner site for children described Tesla as a “famous Croatian.”

Tesla, one of the first people to discover X-ray imaging, was an ethnic Serb born in 1856 in the Austrian Empire in present-day Croatia. Tesla spent most of his life abroad, working in Budapest, Paris and emigrated to the US in 1884 where he assumed American citizenship. He died in New York in 1943.

Tesla was proud of his Serb origin and his Croat homeland.

His ashes are preserved in the Nikola Tesla museum in the Serbian capital Belgrade.

"I've repeated several times that if Nikola Tesla had lived in Yugoslavia [during the World War II], he'd have ended up in the Jasenovac concentration camp," Dacic said.

The Jasenovac concentration camp was an extermination camp established in Slavonia by the authorities of the Independent State of Croatia (NDH) during the World War II.

Serbia's Culture and Information Minister Vladan Vukosavljevic on Friday demanded an apology from the EU for the “fake" description of Tesla's origins.